How to earn Avios on your Accor hotel stays – and Accor Live Limitless points too

Not all Avios collectors know that you can double-up when you stay at any Accor hotel.

As well as earning Accor Live Limitless points as usual from your Novotel, Mercure, Raffles, Fairmont, Sofitel, ibis etc stays, you earn a slug of Avios on top. You get Accor points AND Avios.

There is no catch, except that the Avios will drop into a Qatar Airways Privilege Club account and not your British Airways Club account. As long as your BA and Qatar accounts are linked, however, it is a 30 seconds job to move them across.

The partnership also works in reverse.

If you book a cash ticket on Qatar Airways and credit the flight to a Qatar Airways Privilege Club account, you will earn Accor Live Limitless points from the flight. This is on top of the Avios you earn in Qatar Airways Privilege Club.

To summarise:

• you earn Avios AND Accor Live Limitless points when you stay at Accor hotels

• you earn Accor Live Limitless points AND Avios when you fly with Qatar Airways and credit your flight to Qatar Airways Privilege Club

This is a clear win for anyone who either collects Avios, flies on Qatar Airways or stays in Accor hotels.  You are going to be better off.

You can find full details, and register, on the Accor website here and on the Qatar Airways website here.

How does it work?

This is going to get a little complicated, so let’s start with a simple overview:

As it shows:

• When you stay at Accor hotels, you will earn 1 Avios in Qatar Airways Privilege Club per €1 spent – on top of the Accor points you would usually earn

• When you fly with Qatar Airways and credit the flight to Qatar Airways Privilege Club, you will earn 1 Accor hotel point per $2 spent – on top of the Avios you would usually earn

Let’s summarise what this means:

• Stay in Accor hotels? You can only be better off by registering for this offer.  There is no downside. You get your usual Accor Live Limitless points, and a few days later some Avios will also appear in your Qatar Airways Privilege Club account. You can transfer these to your British Airways Club account.

• Fly with Qatar Airways? If you credit your flight to Qatar Airways Privilege Club, you will gain some Accor Live Limitless points too. The Avios you earn from your flight can easily be moved from Qatar Airways Privilege Club to The British Airways Club. However, there is one snag – you won’t earn British Airways Club tier points if you credit Qatar Airways flights to Qatar Airways Privilege Club.

Bottom line:

• this is a no-brainer if you stay in Accor hotels – open a Qatar Airways Privilege Club account via this link and connect it to your Accor Live Limitless account via this link. Accor will automatically send Avios to your Qatar Airways Privilege Club account after every hotel stay.

• it is NOT a no-brainer if you fly with Qatar Airways – you need to decide whether it is worth sacrificing British Airways Club tier points for some Accor Live Limitless hotel points. This will impact whether you credit Qatar Airways flights to The British Airways Club or Privilege Club.

You can transfer Avios into Accor points, and vice versa

Remember that you can transfer Avios points, held in Qatar Airways Privilege Club, into Accor Live Limitless points, and vice versa.

• 2,000 Accor points = 1,000 Avios in Qatar Airways Privilege Club or The British Airways Club (but 2,000 Avios in Iberia Club, so send your Accor points to an Iberia Avios account)

• 4,500 Avios in Qatar Airways Privilege Club = 1,000 Accor points

Don’t get too excited about this.  Accor points have a fixed value of 2 Eurocents each.  There is no ‘reward chart’ – the points cost for a night is simply the cash price in Euro multiplied by 50.

This means that you are swapping 4,500 Avios in Qatar Airways Privilege Club for a €20 Accor hotel discount.  This is just 0.44 Eurocents per Avios, which is VERY poor. You would be crazy to do this given that converting Avios to Nectar points gets you 0.5p per Avios to spend at Sainsbury’s or Argos stores.

Sign up even if you have ZERO interest in the other scheme!

Why?  Because:

• in the worse case scenario, an Accor guest can take the Avios earned in Qatar Airways Privilege Club and convert them back into more Accor points ….

• …. and an Avios collector can take the Accor points earned and convert them back into more Avios!

Conclusion

This is, I accept, a bit complex.

Let’s assume that you don’t fly with Qatar Airways on cash tickets. If this is you, you can cut to the chase. This is what you should do:

• open a Qatar Airways Privilege Club account here

• link it to your British Airways Club account by following the instructions here

• link it to your Accor Live Limitless account by following the link here and clicking ‘Get Started’

There’s nothing else to do. Whenever you stay at an Accor hotel from now on, a handful of Avios (1 per €1 spent) will drop into your Qatar Airways Privilege Club account. You still get your Accor points as usual. You can move the Avios across to your linked British Airways Club account. It’s free Avios, basically.

You can find out more about the Accor / Avios partnership:

• on the Qatar Airways website here

• on the Accor Live Limitless website here

Our two-part HfP guide to Accor Live Limitless starts here.

PS. If your Accor account is already linked to Flying Blue due to their similar offer, you can switch to Qatar Airways Privilege Club as long as you linked them over 12 months ago. If you linked your Accor account to Flying Blue under a year ago, you need to wait.